


Impair

by deathwailart



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Family Bonding, Father-Daughter Relationship, Female Character of Color, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-24
Updated: 2014-07-24
Packaged: 2018-02-10 07:26:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2016228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/deathwailart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just because he was a mage doesn't mean that Malcolm didn't have plenty to teach Luce.</p>
<p>Written for the 30 day drabble challenge: impair</p>
            </blockquote>





	Impair

There's a wealth of secrets hidden within her family like the true story of how Malcolm Hawke – not even his name, assumed, Ferelden enough, bland and dull enough even if he stands out like a sore thumb, Rivaini with just a dash of Antivan, he always used to say – came to meet Leandra Amell and raise a family consisting of a rogue, a mage and a warrior and a doting mabari on the run. Bethany got the lion's share of Malcolm's attention and Luce hasn't ever begrudged her that the way Carver did but their father's past was never clear, murky and as muddied as the dirt beneath their feet in Lothering and there were things he taught her, little moments here and there. He sounded different then; he never put on a Ferelden accent but time abroad and having to hide had changed how he sounded, something her mother always agreed with. But whenever it was them and it was late and she was tired from a day picking up shifts at the tavern or tramping back from wherever she'd been packed off to for a job. Never far though. Not when that cough settled in his lungs and they all shared looks when he coughed and coughed.  
  
When she'd been a little girl and the twins had been tiny and demanded so much from Leandra, she'd been his little tag-along, wild dark curls and skin just a touch lighter than his with Leandra's long nose and honey eyes. When he'd come home late she'd always stay up – resenting the twins with all the might of a small child for crying together or one starting as soon as the other one had stopped – and rush down to greet him. He'd always had time for her, his first, a child who didn't have the magic that had always been such a blight on his life.  
  
He'd sit up with her, a glass of the finest Antivan brandy they could afford and get out his old leather satchel or the battered wooden box she was told never to open. Not that she listened. It didn't matter that she didn't have the key, that was what old hairpins and whatever else she could find were for, fiddling with the locks with her tongue poking out until she was caught and told to go make herself useful. Useful usually meaning hanging out baby clothes to dry or, even worse, having to scrub them, scowling ferociously because it was disgusting and why did she have to scrub sick or much, much worse? She knows – or she's at least confident enough to assume – that her father was an Antivan Crow in his younger days, the tattoos and the strange coded language she used to catch him speaking when strange men and women would come to the house or approach in the markets.  
  
They tended to move after such instances.  
  
"Luce my little girl," he'd always say even when she was grown, her eyes lined in kohl and her hair glamoured because she liked it and it made her stand out enough that people remembered her and asked after her. "Come sit by me and let me show you a few things." When she got older she'd have a brandy too, tucking herself under his arm as he opened that big old box to show bottles and phials and knives.  
  
There wasn't much he could teach her about magic apart from how to try to defend herself, how to understand the stance of an approaching mage, where to quickly aim with her knives, how long it would take to cast the spell so she could maybe interrupt. It was poisons and bombs he taught her, always in Rivaini where he had to translate the names. Poisons to slow a man, a bomb that would cause everyone to gag and choke, another to provide her cover to stick a knife in a man's back. Where to cut – the spots in robes and armour where her blades could slide deep, that going for the knee or the ankle was a safe bet to slow someone down.  
  
"Bethany likes her healing, I know how useful it is and fireballs and blasts of ice or rock or lightning never go amiss but this, Luce darling," he would flick her nose or sometimes her chin and smile, "this doesn't work in a dark alley or to avoid a fight. Make them weak, make them slow, make them stupid, make them scream as though a revenant has gutted them and be on your way. That's how to stay alive my girl."  
  
Luce makes it through a Blight and through Kirkwall, two blades and subterfuge and knowing how to spot a weakness, a little smile when people ask her about it, all the secrets her father ever told her worn like armour and wielded like her two glittering blades.


End file.
